Friday, January 24, 2014

First Blog!

Hey all! My name is Rachel, and I am a senior majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Integrative Biology. My primary focus is Bio Anth, and I’m thinking of going into the Public Health field once I finish school (although Forensics is giving that thought a run for its money :p). I’m taking this course because, although I don’t know much about Evolutionary Medicine, I’m fascinated by the idea that human health and wellness can be better understood by studying our evolutionary history. This is an idea I’ve only recently begun to hear little blips about here and there, so I’m very excited to learn even more.

Here are a few blogs that I found interesting.

http://ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/ - I think the authors describe this one best: “A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science.”

So, one of the posts I found super interesting and could not stop reading (even the comments) came from the first blog on my list. This blog is written mostly by a few Anthropology faculty members at Penn State, and the particular post I’m referring to is a criticism of Evolutionary Medicine. It seems the main argument against EM (at least according to the authors of this blog) is that there is a question as to whether it is clinically relevant/useful because it doesn’t provide diagnoses or treatments for disease in the same way as traditional medicine. In my opinion, this post was a little too dismissive of EM. Who’s to say that further research in the field of Evolutionary Medicine couldn’t offer diagnoses, treatments, or, even more importantly, methods of prevention for various diseases?